Today, many business and government organizations utilize enterprise software for performing various business functions and providing services. Business functions may include order processing, procurement, production scheduling, customer information management, energy management, and accounting. Services provided by enterprise software are typically business-oriented tools such as online shopping and online payment processing, interactive product catalogue, automated billing systems, security, enterprise content management, IT service management, customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, business intelligence, project management, collaboration, human resource management, manufacturing, enterprise application integration, and enterprise forms automation. Enterprise software is typically hosted on servers and provides simultaneous services to a large number of users, typically over a computer network. This is in contrast to a single-user application that is executed on a user's personal computer and serves only one user at a time. Enterprise software which is utilized by many business and government organizations includes the SAP application from SAP AG CORPORATION of Walldorf, Germany.
Enterprise software is often integrated with web application platforms hosted by separate servers to enable users to remotely access data hosted by enterprise software servers by initiating a “sign-on” operation (i.e., a user name login) from a web application platform server to an enterprise software server. Once such web application platform may include the SHAREPOINT SERVER application from MICROSOFT CORPORATION of Redmond, Wash. One known problem associated with accessing data between web application platform servers and enterprise software servers is associated with the authentication required for performing a single sign-on operation to enable all of the various security settings and data access privileges required for accessing data on enterprise software servers. Previous solutions for solving the aforementioned problem have included the use of Security Assertion Markup Language (“SAML”) token authentication with the open data protocol (“OData”). OData is utilized by some web application platform software and enterprise application software applications for querying and updating data over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (“HTTP”), including the SHAREPOINT SERVER application software and the SAP application software. However, OData does not prescribe any authentication method when used with SAML. It is with respect to these considerations and others that the various embodiments of the present invention have been made.